Why Does the Internet Suck?

The quick answer may be the people who use it

Ones and zeroes don’t lie like humans do. The internet is a prime example of how an infallible technology butts up against the fallibility of man. So it is perhaps unsurprising that the internet, as it stands, is broken.

There’s a perverse logic here: The web fulfills the promise of a democratized media where anyone with a keyboard and a connection can change the world, but it also created a digital axiom underscoring the very worst of humanity: Godwin’s Law, which states, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.”

How did we reach this point where otherwise good people call other otherwise good people the worst human being ever; where a teen survivor of a school mass shooting is called out as a “crisis actor”; where “don’t read the comments” is yet another awkward conversation parents have with their teens; where a foreign nation believed that Americans...

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This story first appeared in the May 21, 2018, issue of Adweek magazine. Click here to subscribe.